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Greeks vs. Independents: My Daughter’s Battle, Not Mine

By Lori Rozsa April 23, 2015 8:18 amApril 23, 2015 8:18 am

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Credit Illustration by Abigail Gray Swartz

Of all of the useful and useless, fretful and hopeful, entirely unsolicited pieces of advice I tossed at my daughter as she was preparing to start her freshman year in college, I was most serious and adamant about this one:

Stay away from frat boys.

Don’t go to their parties — even though it may seem at first that the social life of the campus revolves around them.

Don’t step foot in their houses — those grand antebellum-style mansions look inviting, but they are dangerous places, especially for women.

Don’t date one — any young man who has pledged his loyalty to a group of guys who rank one another’s status on how hot their date looks does not have your best interests at heart.

My warnings came from observation and experience. My daughter attends my alma mater, a state flagship university where Greek life is relatively small on paper (about 15 percent of a student body of 50,000 is in a fraternity or sorority) but has an outsize influence on campus. Or at least it used to.

I had no interest in the Greek system when I went to college. It seemed juvenile and artificial, basically just an extension of high school cliques. I thought it was silly, but mostly harmless.

But then a reported gang rape at a fraternity house sundered the campus. Greeks closed ranks, while the rest of the campus demanded information, investigations and expulsions. I learned the term G.D.I., which stood for “God Damn Independent.” It was used as an epithet by many fraternity and sorority members against anybody who was not Greek, meaning most of us.

The term, meant as an insult, became a point of pride for those of us who were disgusted with the Greek system. I was proud to be a G.D.I.

I tried to raise my daughter to be, if not exactly a G.D.I. — a term I hadn’t heard much since I graduated — certainly an independent thinker.

I believe I succeeded, because she declined to take any of my advice about avoiding Greeks on campus. She wasn’t interested in joining a sorority, but she went to a frat party. She has been in a frat house. She has befriended frat boys. And she’s come out unscathed.

Maybe it’s a generational divide, or a sign of progress. Maybe the Greek system is, at least on her campus, starting to reform itself, however slowly.

Because where I saw villains and stooges behind Greek letters, she sees classmates: some good, some obnoxious, but just classmates. Where I favored dismantling the system, she favors engaging it instead. She sees the misogyny, sexism, racism and homophobia that still exists in some parts of Greek life, but where I favored banishment, she prefers dialogue.

She is a member of the university’s Women’s Student Association, and earlier this school year she started a chapter of HeForShe on campus. The group campaigns for gender equality and aims for solidarity with men to address the issue.

She was talking about the group with a classmate and friend who is in a fraternity. The conversation ended with an invitation for her to speak to the fraternity brothers about HeForShe.

I was stunned. Talking to frat guys about feeling comfortable calling themselves feminists sounded like a nonstarter to me. But she said it went great. They were a receptive and respectful audience. Some of them have even started to attend HeForShe meetings.

That gives me a small glimmer of hope. Greek life isn’t going away any time soon. Caitlin Flanagan, who spent a year researching her Atlantic magazine article The Dark Side of Fraternities, called the system so “baked into the DNA of American higher education” that it’s a permanent fixture. Engaging and reforming may be the best way forward.

I still have my qualms, and the batch of recentbad news coming from misbehaving frat boys around the country lately added to them. University administrators may be quicker to act, but much of the mindset among many of the students involved sounds depressingly familiar to what I heard 30 years ago. Anonymous fraternity members at Penn State took to social media after the police began an investigation into a fraternity Facebook page that featured photos of nude, passed-out young women. The gist of many of the posts: If you come to our house and drink our alcohol, what do you expect?

What my daughter and her friends expect is simple: The rules of civil society don’t stop at the frat house door. Women are not prey. In the real world, respect for women is a prerequisite.

A woman can go to a frat party, in a frat house, and even date a frat boy if she wants to.

About

We're all living the family dynamic, as parents, as children, as siblings, uncles and aunts. At Motherlode, lead writer and editor KJ Dell’Antonia invites contributors and commenters to explore how our families affect our lives, and how the news affects our families—and all families. Join us to talk about education, child care, mealtime, sports, technology, the work-family balance and much more